Today, we have a spectacular list of the 7 Best Minecraft Mods that completely change the game.

Minecraft is one of the most popular games in the world today, and it’s no wonder. With its flexible and replayable gameplay, it’s a treasure trove for all sorts of gamers. Whether you like braving the dangerous dark deep in the mine in search for the shiniest ores, or if you spend most of your days relaxing in fields of wheat, you can enjoy Minecraft at your own pace and in your own way.

Inevitably, however, each and every player hits the point where vanilla Minecraft becomes predictable and, perhaps, even boring. Even with the content – packed updates that Mojang pushes out every so often, after all, there is only so much you can do in Minecraft, especially if you’ve been playing the game for years. Minecraft’s saving grace in this aspect, however, is its amazing moddability — it has perhaps one of the biggest modding libraries and communities of any video game, with thousands of mods and modpacks available with a single click on dozens of different launchers. 

As with any video game community, the modders out there are vastly creative, with fun and passionate ideas that surpass our wildest imaginings. The mods on the market do everything, quite literally, from adding dungeons and dragons, to overhauling weaponry crafting into a literal forging system, to introducing nuclear reactors to Minecraft, to adding thousands of new decorative items. 

Of course, there are tons of awesome mods out there that only change minor aspects of the game — whether by adding a UI tooltip, or quality of life stuff like easier ways to harvest crops. However, sometimes you may just find yourself wanting to change up the blocky universe of Minecraft into something else altogether. Today, we’ve compiled a list of Minecraft mods that change the game fundamentally, whether by introducing new universal mechanics, monsters, world / terrain or structure – generation. So without further ado, let’s get into our brand new list of 7 Amazing Minecraft Mods that Completely Change the Game! 

Pixelmon Mod (Reforged/Generations)

Pokemon, the explosively popular Nintendo franchise, is a game that almost everyone has heard of in some way or another, and that many, many people cite as the source of their childhood nostalgia. It’s a global name that most, if not all, people recognize. However, for all its perfection, there are a few shortcomings in the Pokemon games — mainly that it offers little for fans of survival / open – world games, nor does it offer very much cooperative content for those who love sharing the gaming experience with their friends.

Pixelmon Reforged now brings that same nostalgic experience into Minecraft for you to experience all over again — or even for the first time, if you’re not already versed in the world of Pokemon. You start out in the normal Minecraft world, but the first thing you might notice is that there are now Pokemon wandering around in the universe — or “Pixelmon”, as they are referred to in the mod. These same Pixelmon are the exact ones that you can find in the games. They have the same movesets, types, and models as their Nintendo counterparts.

To find these Pixelmon, you’ll need to find out which areas or biomes they spawn in. Each Pixelmon has set spawns, spawn heights, and even times — for example, if you wanted to find the very best Pixelmon Lucario, you would need to find a Mountainous Forest biome at dawn or dusk. Even if you arrive at the location and search at the correct time, you might not find what you are looking for. This makes looking for Pixelmon challenging but also super rewarding!

The Pixelmons stats still follow how they would be in the actual Pokemon games. This means that you can grind for EVs/IVs to power your Pixelmon up and make them the strongest they can be… or breed for the perfect shiny Pokemon, or simply explore the world with the Pokemon that you enjoy the most! While Pixelmon does completely change how the game is played, you can still use normal in-game mechanics to assist you. To breed Pixelmon, you need to find and make specific blocks in order to have the right environment. For fighting types you will need two anvils, brick stairs, bricks, etc! Making sure that your beloved Pixelmon have the perfect environment to live in and breed for better Pixelmon in the future.  Why not read more about some of the Team Visionary teams best Minecraft resource packs, packed with awesome examples.

Legendary Pokemon have always been the highlight of many players’ Pokemon journeys and it’s the same in Pixelmon.  Every so often a notification will appear in chat letting players know that a Legendary Pixelmon has spawned. The Pixelmon will always spawn near one of the players and the game lets the players know what biome it spawned in, inciting a frantic search on larger servers. Just like normal Pixelmon, legendaries will only spawn in certain biomes. If you are looking for one specific kind, you will need to camp out at those locations till you get lucky enough to encounter one!

If you’re looking to play Pokemon, there’s one official main modpack which includes Pixelmon Reforged. This modpack is The Pixelmon Modpack by PixelmonMod and can be found on Curseforge under the same name. The pack has over 1.6 million downloads and is one of the featured packs, and for good reason! If Pokemon was a part of your childhood, or one of your favorite games, you absolutely have to give Pixelmon a try!

Download Pixelmon Reforged, Pixelmon Generations or The Pixelmon Modpack

NoCubes/NoCubes Reloaded by Cadiboo

NoCubes is different from all the other mods which will be on this list. This reason is that it affects only what you see, and not how you play the game. This mod changes how you see the world, and that change is it removes cubes. While Minecraft is known for its cube shaped everything, sometimes it is nice to change that. NoCubes claims to be the first mod in history that improves and transforms Minecraft’s terrain.

Experience minecraft in a completely new way, one with beautiful round hills, circular and connecting caves, as well as flowing mountain ranges. While it might be a little much to get used to at first, this refreshing new look is sure to grab your attention and grow on you! And most surprisingly perhaps, NoCubes will actually not affect your FPS as badly like most, if not all, other mods do. It claims to be so optimised that in some cases, it might actually be easier on your computer than vanilla Minecraft.

Finally, let’s go over the differences between the two options. Nocubes and NoCubes Reloaded are two similar but different mods. NoCubes aims to give players a more photorealistic and survival-playable experience that NoCubes 1.0 followed. On the other hand, NoCubes Reloaded gives players an original NoCubes 0.8 experience which means a slightly less smooth but more video game – esque experience. 

Download NoCubes and NoCubes Reloaded

Biomes O’Plenty by Forstride

Biomes O’Plenty is a massive minecraft mod that adds in over a whopping SIXTY new biomes into your Minecraft world. These biomes are meshed alongside with normal ones into the natural world generation to give exploration a whole new feeling. Travel around your new Minecraft landscape and find out what these biomes are and what they offer to see which one to build in and what blocks to take.

One of the many biomes that they add in — and one of my favorites — is the Cherry Blossom Grove. This biome changes the normal oak forest to contain two new beautiful types of trees, the white Cherry and pink Cherry Trees, giving the regular forest an absolutely whimsical feeling. This biome, as well as all of the others, add in tons of unique new natural wood, stone, mud, dirt, grass, ore and other blocks that flawlessly fit the biome itself. Of course, this makes sure that each and every one of these new biomes are recognizable and different from the other; and so you’ll be really hard pressed to find two that look the same. Check out some of the Team Visionary teams best minecraft plugins of 2021 for a refreshing look at new plugin additions.

Each biome is rated on rarity to show how often you might find them in your world. The Cherry Blossom Grove has a rarity level of two, with one being the rarest and ten being the most common. The rarest biome you can find in your world would be the Mystic Grove, and for somewhat good reason! This biome has many magical looking blocks and more surprises for you to find within. With the rarity rating, this mod also gives each biome a realism rating which makes it easier for you to find what biome would match what you are looking for. For instance, consider the Woodlands for a realistic setting or Rainbow Hills for fantasy. 

The amount of different kinds of blocks this mod adds in is massive. As mentioned before, each biome offers something that will make it unique and in many cases its the new types of trees or dirt it has to offer. The aforementioned Cherry Blossom Grove, for instance, adds in two new kinds of trees and that is the white and pink Cherry Trees and the Rainbow Hills adds in three new kinds, Rainbow Birch, Rainbow Fir, and Rainbow Oak trees. This is something you can expect to find in each of the new biomes. But it doesn’t stop on the surface, below the ground you can find different new kinds of gems which can be used to craft new kinds of building blocks. These gems spawn in their own respective biome types — such as amber spawning in Forest Biomes. 

This minecraft mod is absolutely huge in terms of what it has to offer, and in some cases that can cause problems when putting them into modpacks. But one great thing about this mod is that it is pretty much compatible with most mods (especially popular mods!) out there. You can find this mod in most if not all mod packs due to just how easy this mod is to have, and the heaping amounts of beautiful content that it brings to vanilla Minecraft terrain generation. Some of the current popular modpacks which use this mod are All the Mods 6 and Valhelsia 2, which you might have seen popular Youtubers play. Now, these are just two of the currently featured modpacks on CurseForge but there are plenty of other modpacks which you can find Biomes O’ Plenty! It also runs perfectly fine on its own, and will enhance your Minecraft world regardless of whether it’s accompanied by other mods or not.

Download Biomes O’ Plenty, All the Mods 6 or Valhelsia 2

MineColonies by H3lay

MineColonies is a town building mod which adds exactly what it says on the tin into your game — the ability to start and manage colonies, civilizations, cities and towns. Build your town up from nothing into its own thriving kingdom. This mod adds so much flexibility, allowing for every type of player to create something unique for themselves, while also adding a TON of replayability into the base Minecraft gameplay. This mod changes how you play Minecraft as a whole — never again will you have to be the one that has to go around punching trees, mining for resources and searching for ores; with enough time, you can have your very own army go do all of that tedious stuff for you!

You’ll be mainly expanding your MineColony by constructing worker huts to collect resources for your town to grow. These huts include the Courier, Cownhand, Crusher, Dryer, Fisher, Fletcher, Forester. Glassblower, Mechanic, Shepherd, Sifter, Stonemason, and Swineherd huts, along with providing types of animal herders and composters. Just from this list alone, you can certainly see how much this mod has to offer! Craft and use each of these worker huts to complete different tasks, each type of worker will bring something to the table for your colony and will be necessary for it to grow.  

If all the different choices of workers and huts wasn’t enough, there’s much more to the mod than that! Each building in MineColonies can be upgraded to give additional usage and buffs. The Courier Hut level increases allows it to carry more stacks, capping out at level five which gives the Courier unlimited carrying capacity. This leveling system can be seen for each tower and so it’s always worth investing in to increase production throughout the colony.

But wait, there’s more! Worker huts are not the only special and important building seen in this mod. You can also find buildings such as the Warehouse, House, Town Hall, Barracks, Library, Creative University, and even the School. Each of these buildings are very important in order to run a colony. You will need the Warehouse to have central storage so a Courier will be able to store and retrieve items which are needed for workers to craft. The University lets you research information so you can upgrade your colony.

Finally, last but certainly not least, the Town Hall is what holds the colony together. Placing down this block will allow you to start your colony and will act as the “claim block” of sorts for it as well. The Town Hall has more uses than just this though, it’ll function as essentially the “control panel” for your little town, allowing you to view important information as well as perform certain actions such as building and hiring mercenaries. Permissions are also set through the Town Hall; this lets you invite other players to join your colony, as well as lets you give them the permissions that you want to, preventing unfortunate phenomena such as griefing or trolling actions. 

It’s also here that you’ll be able to manage and look at citizens, which displays their names and skill levels so you can better utilize them. Lastly, you’ll find yourself using the Town Hall to manage the happiness levels of the colony, making this mod beyond incredible in terms of realism and replayability. There are twelve sections which contribute to the overall happiness of your colony; these sections include things like hunger and damage, as well as death. Each section will show a color beside it to give an indicator of the happiness, green shows positive, blue is neutral, yellow is slightly negative, and red shows completely negative. Keep track of all these different actions and effects using this one tower!

Because it is such a unique mod that changes so much, it can be hard to find it in a lot of packs, but some of the popular modpacks it is in are Valhelsia 3 and Life in the village 2.

Download MineColonies, Valhelsia 3 or Life in the Village 2!

The Lost Cities by McJty

Lost Cities adds in the option to play in the world filled with tons and tons of, well, lost cities! You’ll find yourself spawning into a lonely world scattered with countless old abandoned cities which fill the empty landscape of the normal Vanilla Minecraft overworld. Of course, each city comes with lots of hidden loot and dangerous mobs to battle it out with. Find out what each city has to offer, and once you’ve gathered enough resources and strength, find one to call your own home. Hunker down and rebuild the city in order to survive in this mod.

Each city will be old and partially destroyed, there are highways, bridges, tunnels, and a subway system which allow for pathways throughout each city, and even connect cities together. However, Lost Cities does not come safe. Throughout all of the city and underground locations, you’ll find terrifying dungeons filled with equal parts danger and riches. Do be warned — these dungeons are not for the lighthearted! You will need to risk your lives and your belongings while challenging them. Grab your friends and your best gear, and embark on each thrilling adventure — if you brave it out and make it to the end, you’re guaranteed to find tons of great loot to boost you along your journey.

This minecraft mod is highly configurable so you can change what you don’t like by adding in custom buildings, blocks, control how cities are generated, and alot more. It is also compatible with other world generation mods like Biomes O’ Plenty and Wild Nature, making it completely possible to create the ultimate exploration – based world for you and your friends in Minecraft. 

You can play this mod with it either being the main world, or a separate dimension for you to explore — all of these settings can be customized to your liking in the config files of the mod. This allows for it to be able to be integrated into most if not all modpacks. 

Due to its flexibility and great content additions, you can find this mod is several popular modpacks such as FTB Revelation or Enigmatica 2 – E2!

Download The Lost Cities, FTB Revelation or Enigmatica 2 – E2

Lycanites Mobs by Lycanite

Lycanites Mobs is a massive mod that adds in over one hundred new mobs to specific biomes, dimensions, and more. These mobs range from aggressive and highly dangerous mobs like the Volcan, to peaceful types like Makas. Experience mobs in a whole new way by playing with this mod.

Let’s be honest, mobs in vanilla Minecraft can be scary if you’re new to the game, but once you’ve got a good grasp of the Minecraft gameplay loop, they kind of become pushovers. You might be overrun by hordes of zombies or blown up by a creeper, but once you get yourself a nice set of armor and an enchanted weapon or two, they are not all that scary anymore. But with this mod, all of that is turned on its head. Each mob itself is scary in one way or another, that being either they are tanky, they hit hard, they have unique mechanics that can turn a fight around, or they just look absolutely terrifying. 

Take the Argus for an example; this creature is a disruptive Chaos Elemental that manifests when the balance of nature is disturbed. Argi will apply a debuff called Instability, causing the victim to go flying everywhere. This is only one of the many highly dangerous mobs you can find either on land, underground, at sea, or in the air. Plus, these monsters aren’t always visible on the surface; every action you take in this terrifying new Minecraft world could potentially contribute to spawning in a creature from this mod. For instance, if you make too big of a fire you could spawn a Cinder, or if you mine trees you could spawn a Treant.

Just like how this mod adds in plenty of hostile creatures, it’s the same for creatures who you can tame to help you. The mod adds a comprehensive bestiary and taming system that allows you to tame even the most ferocious of beasts. For instance, the Maug is a wolf-like arctic bear with a crippling pounce that will leave enemies limping away. You can tame this by feeding it beast treats and riding it with a saddle. This is just one of the many support mobs you can find, but some other mobs can also be summoned!

If all that wasn’t enough, this minecraft mod not only adds in mobs, but it also adds in items and armors from the mobs as well. By using the tiers of forges, infuser, and equipment station, you can craft and upgrade different tools and armors. Summoning Staves are also another major item for the mod, with these you can summon mobs to defend and attack. Pick between the twenty+ summonable mobs. But it doesn’t stop here, some of these mobs can’t even be fused together when the correct two are summoned.

Some of the most popular modpacks that use this amazingly unique and challenging mod is RLCraft and Nephrite — though, do be careful with RLCraft; it’ss a very hardcore sort of pack!

Download Lycanites Mobs, RLCraft or Nephrite

Skyblock Modpacks

Okay, perhaps we need to make a brief clarification at this point. While we did mention that this article would mostly cover Minecraft mods that would completely change your Minecraft gameplay — from monsters to challenge your combat abilities to new biomes that enhance your terrain generation, each of the mods above changes a core aspect of the block game we all love. 

But this one is not necessarily one mod, but instead, a few modpacks that adopt the genre and gameplay of a very popular Minecraft server gamemode. Perhaps when we mention Minecraft servers and gamemodes, the first thing that comes to people’s mind is Skyblock, especially with the explosive popularity of Hypixel Skyblock. Well, as such, we felt that even though it’s not technically a mod, these Skyblock – inspired modpacks such as SkyFactory, ProjectOzone, and Modern Skyblock would be of tons of interest to some of you guys out there. And that’s why they’re on this list!

Skyblock itself changes most if not all core aspects of minecraft. It removes the open – world exploration, and instead makes you expand one block at a time. It locks tons of resources behind walls, and completely changes progression by making you go step by step until you get the thing you are looking for. This is, of course, no different — in fact, it’s amplified a hundredfold in these Skyblock ultra modpacks. This kind of progression lasts until the very end of the modpack, but along the way you start to automate things to speed up the process.

Starting off is probably the one aspect that changes the most between normal games to Skyblock. You have to literally go block – by – block not only to expand your one block base, but to also start progressing. In packs that we’ve played, you have to start by grinding wood, before moving on to creating dirt, to making a cobblestone generator, sieving down blocks to get ores, etc. This process might seem simple on paper but it is actually quite a lot to do; and when you’re finally sitting back and watching the fruits of your labor produce tons and tons of resources for you automatically, that feeling is invaluable. Learn more about how skyblock servers work with our dedicated resource area of the Team Visionary website.

Even with the same general playstyle that Skyblock modpacks have, each one has its own spin on the mode. Modern Skyblock for example takes the game and allows you to choose what challenge you want. It also has its own unique mods which are integrated into the game which change up which orders you progress and it makes you work through each mod before you can finish the modpacks.

Most if not all of the Skyblock modpacks have quests to help you progress and to lead the way if you are not sure what to do. These quests also give rewards in the form of loot crates for those gamblers out there — they can certainly yield some VERY helpful items if you’re lucky.

Download Modern Skyblock 3: Departed or SkyFactory 4